Exodus Laughing
by Fluffernutter8
Summary: "We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." -Walt Disney. Buffy and Angel moving, in seven parts. Contains references to BTVS 1, 6 and 7 and ATS S1 and 5.


___i. But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong__  
_  
Buffy cried for half the ride to Sunnydale, sniffling dramatically in the back seat as she clutched a photograph of six teenage girls at the beach (Buffy and her friends Lacey, Tiffany, Ashley, Stacy and Katey). Three hours down the I-5, Joyce looked at her daughter in the rearview mirror, now sighing and staring forlornly out the window. Joyce herself had done her crying the night before, all part of of her plan to keep the situation as comfortable as possible for Buffy.

Buffy didn't actually think the "situation" was comfortable at all. It was enough that she now apparently had a sacred destiny that meant that the safety of the entire world depended on a girl who couldn't get over a C in Algebra. It was too much that Mom and Dad had gotten a divorce. Obviously they hadn't tried hard enough at couple's therapy, which had turned Tess Moran's parents from the couple who threw cake at each other at the school Christmas pageant to the one who took bimonthly couple's weekends. And now Mom was dragging her away from all her friends. Then again, that might not be so bad. When Dad started having to go away a lot, he sat down and made a list of the good things that it would bring: more money so they could buy more things, never having to watch baseball/basketball/hockey instead of 90210, no more listening to horribly sung oldies on car rides. So she just had to make a list of the good that would come out of the total ruination of her life. Well, her friends would never figure out for sure what kind of freak she was. And she didn't have to tell anyone at her new school why she got kicked out of Hemery. In fact, she could pretend she hadn't gotten kicked out at all, or she could say it was for something a lot cooler than burning down the gym. Maybe she could even say that she came from a different school than Hemery, somewhere that movie stars' kids went.

Buffy settled back in her seat, the picture tucked against her side. Mom turned off at the exit for Sunnydale. If she got to reinvent herself, maybe small town life wouldn't be so bad. And at least she could get away from the freakishness of LA.

___ii. I've loved like I should but lived like I shouldn't/Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road  
_  
One of the advantages of Angel's new apartment was its proximity to the local liquor store and several nearby bars. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten drunk. When you spend most of your time with a teenage girl, you're more likely to be drinking a bottle of soda than a bottle of beer, and when you're a deadbeat with no job, you don't have spare change lying around to get hideously pissed, no matter how much it would dull the memories.

He'd gotten drunk, or close to it, nearly every night since leaving Sunnydale. He knew that it wasn't what Buffy would want- hell, it wasn't what he wanted- but for once he was spot on when he told Buffy about loneliness. He was drowning in loneliness more than whiskey here, where he knew no one. It should have been a completely familiar situation for him, the hundred year wanderer, but it was not anymore, not once he remembered what it was like to have a home and a family again.

He remembered hopping trains all over the country in the thirties, Greyhounds later. At the beginning, little things would remind him of his victims. He could go a day without any memories and then come across a music box that played a tune his mother used to hum, or smell an apple pie like the one Colonel Mulligan's sister was baking before he killed both of them and arranged their bodies in an incestuous tableau.

Now he couldn't even go a few hours without remembering Buffy. All his senses seemed to be attuned to catching something that was reminiscent of her. Last week he had heard- with some surprise, knowing the rapidity of changing fashions- the last song he and Buffy had danced to at the Bronze. The other night he had fought a G'nalp demon and then lain awake in bed the next day, trapped in a memory of every punch and quip of Buffy's battle with a similar demon. An hour ago he ran into a girl wearing a white sweater similar to the one Buffy wore the first time she told him that she loved him.

It struck him as hideous the way he had forced her to say that. He had loved her within seconds of seeing her bright, slightly confused smile and her confection-colored clothing. He had wanted to tell her, but out of nervousness and propriety, had tried to show her instead. That night he had lied and been harsh, and she had opened herself to him, her answer brutal and honest. And he had still been afraid, for months afterward, to tell her the same.

It was seeing the girl in the white sweater that had brought him to this bar. She wasn't even a blond and was too tall to even resemble Buffy. Still, any humanity in him, he recognized as Buffy's handiwork, and so everything he touched in Los Angeles made him think of her.

___iii. I've found you find strength in your moments of weakness/I've lived in this place and I know all the faces  
_  
Dawn slept a lot, but it wasn't the eager, first day of school type sleep that Buffy remembered her engaging in in earlier years. School didn't actually seem to be first priority for her sister. Or second priority. Or third. Or any priority, in fact. Buffy didn't think that she had seen Dawn doing homework in months, which she probably should have been worried about. If the school told Social Services, they might take Dawn away.

But Dawn sleeping all the time gave Buffy time to do her own things. Things like slay and forget to eat and screw Spike and stare in the direction of the late night movie on TV and eat a few bites of a nasty Doublemeat burger and look at old pictures and throw up her tiny meal and shower and go to bed and dream with details that she didn't even know she remembered.

She also used the time to pay bills. It was something Mom used to do, stay up late a couple times a month when she thought both her daughters were asleep, and sigh over how they were going to get through the month. Dawn knew there was trouble. Buffy wasn't as adept at hiding things as Mom used to be (everyone conversed about them at dinner as if it should all be laid out like platters of food, for everyone to pick at and nibble on) but she didn't know that sometimes Buffy took extra, middle of the night shifts at the DMP to keep the lights on, that the orthodontist's office sometimes still called because the last few payments on Dawn's braces hadn't yet been made. Buffy wanted to keep it that way, to retain some of her sister's youth after all this mess.

So she did the payments quietly, no music or TV in the background, sitting at the kitchen table like Mom used to. There were some she paid without thinking- car payments, utilities, TV to keep up the illusion that everything was alright- getting into a nice rhythm of burning through her bank account. But halfway through the pile she came across the mortgage notice. She weighed it in her hand, noted the "URGENT" stamped across the back (not in red yet, because she had only skipped one month's payment so far), looked around the room.

"It's a house for just us girls!" Mom had said as they packed to make the move to Sunnydale, in between the advertisements for "excellent schools!" and "really nice kids in the neighborhood!" But "us girls" was down one member and the house was too big for the two that were left. For the first time, Buffy considered moving. Willow and Tara could find somewhere. Buffy and Dawn could get their own place. Xander had a lot of new friends in construction and housing now, maybe he could find them an apartment that fit a DMP salary. Their means were limited and Buffy needed to start living within them.

She would pay the mortgage this month and find a new place before the next payment was due. She set the bill on the pile to be paid, satisfied with the decision.

At least for five minutes. She looked up after going through the credit card statement and trying to read through what the insurance company had to say. She saw the place-mats her mom had bought, two sets, one for everyday and one for company. She saw the counter where she had patched Angel up after their fight with the Three. She saw the pigtailed, wide-smiled school pictures on the fridge, the old report cards that Mom had been insistent about keeping up and that her daughters hadn't taken down even now that they could. This was the house where she had grown up, really grown up, and she couldn't sell it.

The bill would still be paid, but Buffy would keep paying the month after that, and the next one too. Even if it meant more burgers for dinner than real food.

She couldn't afford it, but she couldn't sell their girls place.

___iv. I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't  
_  
For some reason Angel thought that his things would magically be moved into his new penthouse. He didn't expect to have to go through the process of packing his things, of organizing his life into what was important and what he should throw away. He did it though, alone. Wes offered to help, their close friendship restored in the other man's mind now that the whole Connor situation never happened. Angel couldn't accept that help yet.

He packed with the phone beside him, waiting for a call from Buffy. He refused to believe that it would be anyone but her. Even knowing the impossible risks she was running, he believed that she would win. She always had before. That was Buffy, beating the odds with a quip and a smile. Then again, Buffy had looked tired and scared in a way that he rarely remembered her being, despite all the things she had gone through in the time they were together. He had spent the time since he left Sunnydale flip-flopping. One minute he was ready to turn back, the next he decided that he should respect her decision to send him away.

He packed his journals first because he couldn't help but cling to his memories, even though he could remember everything in colored detail, could play it all back on command like a movie. They were an indulgence of his- nice suede diaries, not cheap dime store notebooks- and they filled an entire box because he couldn't help but be particular. (Cordelia would have said anal, but Cordelia wasn't exactly saying anything at the moment.)

Buffy called as he taped up the last of his boxes. She was at the hospital in LA, she said. Sunnydale was gone, Spike was gone, Anya. All of the potentials were now Slayers. They were leaving for Cleveland as soon as everyone was patched up. Just wanted to let him know.

He was disappointed as he loaded the boxes into a car not meant for transferring that much cargo. He had wanted to see her again. Although maybe he didn't really as he pulled up to Wolfram and Hart, and a uniformed attendant jumped out of a booth, calling for assistance in unpacking the car, holding out his hands for the keys, muttering "Mr. Angel" between sentences.

Despite his protests against all these things, he found his car being driven into the garage as he took the private elevator up to the apartment, having been Mr. Angel-ed into taking only one box.

The apartment was spotless and there were lamps everywhere and still he wasn't surprised that it felt filthy. He was glad that he had not brought Buffy here.

He had his reasons for doing this, of course he had his reasons, he wouldn't be in LA's version of the Hellmouth without reasons. He could remember them, could picture his son's clean, happy face, could almost hear Cordelia's heart monitor if he listened hard enough. He lay down with his clothes on, even his shoes. It only made sense to be wary.

"I ain't getting any older," he had told Buffy in Sunnydale, an odd, Western phrase for him. He wondered if he should have told her about the possibility of getting older. Then he decided it was better that he hadn't, seeing as she hadn't seemed quite confident in reaching her own next birthday.

Second-guessing seemed to be a hobby of his. Number two after worrying. Or maybe three after paranoia.

"Sometimes I do think that far ahead," was what she told him. He was casual, nearly Cryptic Guy, in response. He didn't tell her about when he thought that far ahead, not sure if it was a fantasy future or a real one. All he knew was that it was a good one, a happy one where his friends, his family were safe and healthy, where Buffy was with him and Connor was sane and his son again. Well, that part he knew was a fantasy. He had climbed into the demon's mouth for Connor and the only way out was killing the demon from the inside.

And even that wouldn't bring his son back to him.

Moving was once about fresh starts and mopping up the past. Now he seemed to take his past with him, as if it were tucked in between his shirts in the boxes that were still scattered around his new apartment, waiting for him to make himself at home in hell again.

___v. For once I'm at peace with myself/I've been burdened with blame, trapped in the past for too long  
_  
The girls were giggling over the hunky Italian moving men. Buffy wished she could do the same, but she was a little busy trying to get them to bring the right things to the right rooms. After an hour of trying to get by with hand gestures and a few words of Spanish that she hoped were similar in Italian (they weren't), she gave up and just let them drop the boxes anywhere. The girls could sort it out later.

The building was tall and the girls were in rooms of three or four. Buffy was sleeping in a little hut outside, barely bigger than Cordy's walk-in closet back when she had one, but at least she didn't have to compete for the bathroom every morning.

She didn't have many knick-knacks, or books, or clothes, or much of anything at all actually. She had a couple of shelves by her bed where she put a photo album and her Angel things- cross, ring, sonnets, a pressed flower from prom- along with the men in her life- Messrs. Gordo and Pointy- and a compass that her mom had given her for graduation. "May you always find your direction," it said on the back. Corny, but nice, and Buffy had grabbed it and stuffed it into her bag.

There wasn't much she had been able to take and there were so many that she didn't have mementos of. Nothing of Riley or Tara or Spike, people she had fought beside and loved. She was glad to have Willow and Xander and Giles, the people who had stood with her from the beginning. Until just before the end.

As she tossed in her bed (even though she was their official leader, she still had to get the skimpiest mattress in exchange for her own room) she thought about how good it was to have her own space again. A place that was safe, that she owned and that no one else was crowding in to.

Her room was tiny, her bed was tiny and she was alright with that for now. There might not have been any room in it, but she didn't need room for anyone but herself at the moment.

___vi. I've dealt with my ghosts and I've faced all my demons/Finally content with a past I regret  
_  
He thought for a long while that maybe he would return to Ireland. He didn't in the end. Sometimes, he had realized, it was better to pack the memories in boxes for storage rather than rearranging them in your new home. They would still be there, you could fetch them from the attic and page through them, but they didn't need to be sitting around, pretty little ornaments on your mantle for your eye to catch and brood upon.

The Amish had always been kind to him and they had long memories, so he went there first, lived in the barn belonging to a man named Caleb Jorganson, and his family. Caleb let him do work in the night and before sun-up. Angel would watch over the animals and think about his family's blood on his hands. He wondered whether it would be the seventh circle for him- for violence- or the ninth, for betrayal, before he decided that he would be a good candidate for anywhere in hell.

He was all ready to do his best animal in pain curling inward routine when he saw Wesley.

It was a dream, but it felt real. Not prophetic, just truthful. He believed Wes as he said that the Shanshu was coming, that it would come in increments as he let go of his guilt.

Which proved a lot easier when it was just a theory in a dream spoken in a British accent. He would spend days in a corner of the barn, running over everything in his mind, wondering if it was really all his fault. One night- chilly, March- he was getting up for work and realized that he would never let go of anything, but maybe he could pack it away for a while. He thought of one night when he fought beside Buffy. She had been hurt while his back was turned. He was also fighting to the death, but he had blamed himself, wincing every time she did for the next few days while the slashes healed.

That wasn't his fault, he realized, and when he woke up the next sundown, he couldn't hear Angelus in his head. It got a little easier after that to separate his faults from Angelus's. Still, it took a year, maybe more, for him to change. In November, he started staying out later and later into the sunrise. On the day he has to ask Caleb Jorganson to use his outhouse, he almost cried.

When he left the Jorganson's, his guilt was slung over his shoulder as surely as his rucksack, but it was no longer the heaviest thing there. It would always be with him, it just wouldn't be the first thing you saw when you walked in the door.

The first thing he did when he got to Lancaster was buy a house with some Wolfram and Hart money he had planned never to use. The second thing was to fill the walls with books, all types. He couldn't remember the last time he had had a real chance to sit down and read.

The third thing he did was find a demon willing to get him an identity and a teaching license. It was more guilt to pack on the pile, but once he started teaching, he felt better about it. He taught English and History and, for a few months, he covered for a French teacher who was going on maternity leave. He was Mr. O'Reilly, room 319, and he thought that they liked him. ("They," in fact, liked him a lot, especially because he wasn't afraid to talk about the Founding Fathers and Gandhi and Einstein as real people with mistresses and prejudices and sordid pasts. They hid it, though, because he had a tendency to assign a lot of homework, even on weekends, and what high school kid wants that?)

He had a lot to do between reading and grading papers and exercising to keep his new-old, slightly stronger than regular human body in shape. But he always spent sundown on his porch (which he stopped thinking of as his blood money porch when he made enough to replace the Wolfram and Hart money and give it, anonymously and untraceably, to charity) thinking about his days in Sunnydale, Buffy's town, and Los Angeles, his own, and about the family he buried there.

The new house didn't have an attic for storing his vacuum-packed, extra light guilt. His mind did the storage just fine.

___vii. At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me/And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone  
_  
He likes the huge, fake Victorian on Center Street. She likes the raised ranch on Thill Avenue. They argue about it when the girls have gone to bed, one of the competitive, half-joking arguments they have these days. It ends up in the NC-17 way that most of their fights do, which is a definite plus to their new life.

They have problems, of course they have problems- he's too neurotic, too comparative, she gets too worked up and likes to huddle in on herself- but they're going to deal with it. It's been decided that if they're going to be separated, it'll be from life, not from leaving.

Life seems content with just throwing light curves at them for now. There were demons under the girls' school in Phoenix, which sent both parents into quiet hysterics in the nights after they found out. Buffy was nearby when a neighborhood boy was killed by a vampire in Highland Ranch, Colorado and since the vampire had been disposed of, it looked suspicious. They had been in Chicago when Abby kicked another third grader hard enough to break his leg. They left as soon afterward as they could without looking overly suspicious. Currently they're in a crap-hole near Hartford, but they drive every Saturday to look for a new place. They hit West Haven today and as soon as they reached the city limits, Ginny leaned forward and put her face in between the two front seats and said "I _like_ it here."

They liked it too. "The most family friendly city in Connecticut," Angel kept saying as they went from house to house. There were a lot to choose from, which is why they're having a problem.

They lie in bed together, sweating from the summer heat. It's very dark. They listen to Ginny and Abby breathing moistly through the wall between the rooms. He presses her palms together between his. "Buffy. Love of my life, queen of my heart, mother of my children. Be reasonable."

She lets the pout go into her voice. Having it on her face is useless at night. "But the ___sunroom_, Angel. What about the sunroom?"

"Maybe the sunroom is the piece that's pushing the price fifty thousand dollars out of our price range."

"Well, unless you get us on one of those home makeover shows, we're not getting that huge ruin that you love so much."

"It's a classic!"

"It should be on a haunted house tour!"

One of the girls shifts in her sleep next door and they pause their whisper-shouting. When it is quiet through the thin wall, they lie back again and are still for a while.

Angel thinks Buffy is asleep until she rolls on to his chest so she is looking down at him. "What about that colonial? The blue one."

He grunts a little, thinking. "Nice size, near the schools."

"Big yard," she adds.

"We'll put in a bid on Monday, okay?"

"I'll do it. You've got your interview."

"Yeah, alright."

They lie back, tangle for a while.

"This has to be it, Angel."

"I'm going to start training with the girls. Twice a week, as soon as we have a house."

"Just tai chi and meditation, right? No fighting yet."

"Exercises to help them keep control. That's it."

"I want to stay here for good. I want this to be a funny story about, "hey remember that summer we stayed in the squishy apartment that smelled like fish fingers?" not just one step in our cross country tour."

He sighs. "I can't promise anything, but if I have anything to do with it, this will be the last one."

"Last move?" She whispers.

His answer takes a moment. He's started to doze. "Last move."


End file.
